Faculty Directory
Chunhui Xu, PhD
Professor
Director, Cardiomyocyte Stem Cell Laboratory
Department of Pediatrics
Emory University School of Medicine
EMAIL: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
PHONE: 404-727-7774
Biography
Chunhui Xu, Ph.D., is a Professor at the Department of Pediatrics, Emory University School of Medicine. She received her doctoral degree from the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia and postdoctoral training from the Burnham Institute in San Diego, California.
Research
Dr. Xu has extensive research experience on stem cells and cardiogenesis. Before joining Emory University in 2012, she conducted research on the growth and differentiation of human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs) at Geron Corporation in Menlo Park, California. At Emory, she directs the Cardiomyocyte Stem Cell Laboratory at the Pediatric Research Alliance, a center sponsored by Children’s Health Care of Atlanta, Georgia Institute of Technology, and Emory University. Her research is focusing on hPSC-derived cardiomyocytes, which hold promise for cardiac cell therapy, disease modeling, drug discovery, and the study of developmental biology. Dr. Xu has received extramural research funding from NIH (the National Institutes of Health), CASIS (the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space), NSF (the National Science Foundation) and AHA (the American Heart Association).
Dr. Xu's group has made significant contribution to the field of hPSCs. Notably, they have (1) established a widely used feeder-free system for maintaining stem cells, (2) identified a role for basic fibroblast growth factor in supporting the self-renewal of undifferentiated stem cells, (3) developed a growth factor-guided method for efficient differentiation of stem cells into cardiomyocytes, (4) identified the role microgravity and novel molecules in cardiac proliferation and differentiation, and (5) demonstrated therapeutic potential of hiPSC-cardiomyocytes. She has published in journals including Nature Biotechnology, Circulation Research, Biomaterials, Disease Models and Mechanisms, and Stem Cell Reports, and is an inventor or co-inventor of 18 issued U.S. patents. Several of her publications have been identified as a hot paper or among the most highly cited publications in the stem cell field.